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I simply don’t see what good this CEO has done. He’s destroyed googles reputation with developers. Destroyed customer trust in Google products. Done nothing
by andrewstuart 4y ago
I simply don’t see what good this CEO has done.
He’s destroyed googles reputation with developers.
Destroyed customer trust in Google products.
Done nothing to fix googles reputation for terrible customer service.
Led Google to third place in cloud computing.
AND been thrashed by Microsoft / ChatGPT, putting Googles core business at risk.
Why is this guy CEO?
- s1k3s 4y agoDid he make them money?
- andrewstuart 4y agoThe only thing he has done is not destroy the Google cash firehose. The advertising cash firehose is perhaps the only thing that matters at Google. But, having been severely caned by ChatGPT and left flat footed on AI i think it’s reasonable to say even that firehose is now at risk.
- expertentipp 4y agoWhy why still query and ask any questions to the ad machine?
- nubinetwork 4y agoOne could argue he's ruined that too because of all the scam ads they push on a daily basis.
- kevviiinn 4y agoI don't see how serving scam ads would impact google, they still get paid to do it
- LadyCailin 4y agoShort term, sure. But they are not a monopoly.
- hobofan 4y agoMaybe not in legal terms. However a 90% market share in a market where the majority of consumers never evaluates switching to a competitor, gives you so much leeway in execution, that there isn't much difference to a monopoly.
- riceart 4y ago> never evaluates switching to a competitor Again: “short term, sure” Unless you have a convincing case for why “never” evaluating switching will last forever.
- DSingularity 4y agoIt’s really funny to read this over and over from so many people. You are saying google can’t match and surpass chatGPT? You know, google the people who invented the model architecture used by ChatGPT… the people who wrote the first ML training frameworks and the subsequent most popular one… the ones who designed hardware accelerators to minimize training and inference… the people with enough excess compute to probably train a model with even more parameters? Come on.
- fnord77 4y ago70s: "You are saying GM can't match and surpass Toyota for small cars?" etc. history is littered with the dominant player getting shellacked by an upstart And it usually is for political reasons not technical reasons. Bard is a piece of shit. It's probably being held back so that it doesn't compete internally with google search
- justinclift 4y agoYet, here we are. ;)
- autonomousErwin 4y agoI've heard this countless times as well and I wonder if the root cause comes from Google's inability to turn its research into practical applications. Case in point, 2017 Google Brain released the "Attention Is All You Need" paper however haven't done anything proactively to deliver it to mass users like OpenAI have done (among others) - perhaps this is the kick that Google needs to remind them that research alone isn't enough, it needs practical applications and the question could be whether Pichai is the right CEO to deliver that
- DSingularity 4y agoTBH no I don’t think that’s the case. I think they are actually approaching this space with care. Whether it’s social media, search, or ChatGPT there is an obvious human-race scale impact that I believe google recognizes that the “disrupters” disregard.
- 1024core 4y ago> The only thing he has done is not destroy the Google cash firehose. Unfortunately, this recent LLM trend will seriously threaten it. If an LLM can provide the answer, then why would a user click to go to a website? And if there are no clicks to a website, why would the website curate the information? How will they make money? The long-term effects of how LLMs are integrated into Search are still unknown. Of course, MSFT would love to push Google into LLMs, as that hurts their ads business. Also (as I mentioned in an earlier comment) he has been milking that cow a bit too much. The ad load on Google sites has gone through the roof. A fair(er) comparison of his performance would be to see how much revenue Google would make at the same ad load as in 2015. Any idiot can make 5x more revenue in the very short term by showing 20x more ads. That is not rocket science. What _is_ interesting is if you can do it without increasing the ad load. That's where the real magic lies.
- lawn 4y agoGoogle would still be making a ton of money even with a CEO that did nothing. For a $226M compensation, we should be able to demand a bit more don't you think?
- hammyhavoc 4y agoWho is "we" in your comment?
- blthroaway 4y agoProbably he means the collective that has installed themselves to be the vocal judges of all things humanity - mostly for their own benefit.
- osigurdson 4y agoMaybe OP is a shareholder. Most people probably own some google stock via ETFs even if they didn't explicitly buy the stock.
- sysstemlord 4y agoWe the guys discussing whether he has or hasn't done something worth hundreds of millions, you don't have to be so word picky.
- hammyhavoc 4y agoI'm not picky, I asked an honest question. I'd argue that most human beings never do anything worth even a million dollars, let alone hundreds of millions, especially execs.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- stanwesley 4y ago> we should be able to demand a bit more Are you a major shareholder?
- IshKebab 4y agoHe did pretty well with Android I think.
- andrewstuart 4y agoOk credit where it’s due: Android and YouTube are doing great.
- victor106 4y agoHe wasn’t the CEO when The YouTube acquisition happened in 2006.
- genericacct 4y agoNone of which started during his reign, am i wrong?
- andrewstuart 4y agoWell he hasn’t ruined them. That’s the standard we’re talking here.
- bottom999mottob 4y agoThe bar is astronomically low
- frankfrankfrank 4y agoYouTube is yet another echo chamber and that is clearly toxic and only becoming more so as is being transformed with tiktok like functionality and content. It is becoming what is essentially the mainstream model; get people addicted to watching so you can feed their minds with mind drugs, aka ads.
- serf 4y agoYouTube gets away with numerous anti-user tactics because they're in-effect the only show in town, not because the experience is great. It's not a big surprise that a Google backed product could suffer to bleed money the longest over other streaming services.. in other words their longevity in the field isn't an indicator of quality or customer happiness, just circumstance.
- hammyhavoc 4y agoLet's be honest, the trust from these demographics towards Google wasn't great even prior and hadn't been for a while.
- PartiallyTyped 4y agoGoogle was previously known for being engineering-oriented and was respected for that by the developers. Now it seems that all it is known for is empire-building, dropping products, and features for the sake of features.
- hammyhavoc 4y agoYup. But this was a problem even prior to the current CEO. It's an established culture.
- juujian 4y agoHe has been CEO since 2015. Would it be a stretch to blame him for the current company culture of nurturing new products left and right just to kill them off after 3-5 years?
- danaris 4y agoThat's 8 years. If he wanted to turn that culture around, he's had plenty of time to at least make a visible effort.
- ngc248 4y ago>>> current company culture of nurturing new products left and right just to kill them off after 3-5 years? This predates Sundar's stint. Reader was only the first one, but this culture of killing products is in Google's DNA itself.
- juujian 4y agoMy impression is, Sundar has perfected it? I remember the post the other day that listed all the products that were killed over the years, that has been going on for a while. It would be interesting to see products launched vs. products killed, and average lifetime of products.
- v8xi 4y agoYou could blame him for not changing the culture, but Google has a long history of killing off new products that precedes 2015
- mekoka 4y agoSatya Nadella took the helm at Microsoft in 2014, right after Ballmer and basically brought the company back from the brink of irrelevancy. Even if we can't point to Pichai as the person responsible for Google's dysfunction, he had time to steer the ship.
- dr_kiszonka 4y agoAs much as I hate Google killing off its products, I think the alternatives are worse, i.e., either launching fewer new products or supporting products that are not sustainable (which would ultimately lead to launching fewer products).
- rqtwteye 4y agoThey are making tons of money. That’s what counts. Same for Ballmer at MS. Maybe they lost their magic but they were printing money.
- safety1st 4y agoOver the past 4 years, GOOG's net income and earnings per share have fallen quite a bit. Revenue has been pretty flat. I don't get why Pichai is so well paid. Ballmer actually did preside over some impressive growth when he was CEO of MSFT. Pichai has not. Edit: I was looking at the wrong numbers. Google's profit has roughly quadrupled in the 8 years Pichai has been CEO. His compensation makes a lot more sense in that light.
- dkyc 4y agoHuh? Revenue 2019: $160bn Revenue 2022: $280bn Net income 2019: $34bn Net income 2022: $60bn
- safety1st 4y agoHmm. I was going by this chart, looks like it may be wrong: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/net-income https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/net-...
- lotsofpulp 4y agoThe macrotrends list of net income by year below the charts is correct. The trailing 12 month chart at the top you may have been looking at is not a chart of annual net income.
- safety1st 4y agoThank you for the clarification!
- ystad 4y ago
- nemo44x 4y agoDon’t forget how he was humiliated and bullied time and again by the rank and file. An atrocious lack of leadership. He might be a smart nerd but he’s not a leader.
- gsatic 4y agoMainly cause no one smart wants that job. It's just mindless politics 24*7. It's left to the mindlessly ambitious or ppl who are placeholders to prevent the mindlessly ambitious from sitting in the chair. We have passed the point of org complexity where the CEO does anything beyond ensuring no on totally insane takes over. There are lot of such ppl who dieing to charge you for every search query or email you send. Think Larry Ellison or Rupert Murdoch types taking over Google.
- ulfw 4y agoFor 226 MILLION dollars I bet my ass a ton of VERY SMART people would want that job. Many many many.
- cebert 4y agoBeing the smartest person in the room doesn’t necessarily mean than they’re a great leader.
- elliekelly 4y agoOr maybe the smartest people have decided money isn’t everything?
- bmcquade 4y agoSundar became CEO at a time when Google needed a leader who could build consensus across different product areas. Sundar was the right person for this role. Unfortunately Sundar is also relatively weak at setting a bold vision to ensure the company continues to grow and innovate, as Larry had done. So under Sundar the company has slowly shifted from being innovative to being very risk averse, incentivising not making mistakes, maintaining the status quo, and focusing on cutting costs over creating new lasting value. The effect of these changes is finally becoming more apparent.
- Xelbair 4y agoso to paraphrase, he is a bean counter.
- bmcquade 4y agoI think he cares deeply about the company and its mission, he just lacks the ability to be a bold and decisive leader. This can be a good thing in some cases (he is good at building consensus for example), but can also be harmful.
- mft_ 4y agoA quick Google (natch!) suggests that the company mission is: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Does he "care deeply" about this? If we look at the direction they've taken in recent years, and the products they've launched (and/or killed) - how many of them demonstrate a "deep care" about this mission? How many of them are even tangentially related to this mission? (The projects that Google undertook in the early days --Earth, Maps, Mail, digitising whole libraries, photographing the world for StreetView-- definitely showed a dedication to this mission statement.)
- eastbound 4y agoI don’t find the world information on Google when I search. Gmail works much better. It does, indeed, organize the world’s information, the world’s private and corporate information. But the only who can really search through it is the CIA. Maybe we’re not the real customers ;)
- refurb 4y agoUnder his leadership (2015 to now), Google revenues have gone from $75B to $279B, a 272% increase. Google stock was a $30/share and is now at $105/share (250% increase). That's what he's done. Just in 2022, revenues were up $23B, so his cut was 1.2% of that.
- vlovich123 4y agoYou can’t look at this stuff in a vacuum. How did Google fare compare to the broader tech market? If they were outperforming before and matching/underperforming after, that’s a wholly different picture.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hartator 4y agoAnd 8 years before, it went from 10bn to 75bn. A 750% increase. He slowed down growth by 3x.
- DSingularity 4y agoAs the magnitude increases matching growth rates becomes harder?
- CyberDildonics 4y agoAre you asking if that is true?
- DSingularity 4y agoNo :)
- kinghtown 4y agoI’m not a fan of Sundar but I’d be way more pleased as an investor with 200bn growth vs 65bn.
- serverlessmania 4y agoLiterally, nothing good, the chore of Google business is losing ground, Chrome losing more and more users in favor of Edge, Google search taking a hit since OpenAI and Microsoft partnered together to bring AI to search, serial acquisition and sunsetting of products, worse bureaucracy in the whole tech industry, and the list goes on!
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoChrome is sitting near all-time highs in market share: https://www.statista.com/statistics/268254/market-share-of-internet-browsers-worldwide-since-2009/#:~:text=Global%20market%20share%20held%20by%20internet%20browsers%202012%2D2023%2C%20by%20month&text=As%20of%20January%202023%2C%20the,18%20percent%20of%20market%20share https://www.statista.com/statistics/268254/market-share-of-i.... Search hovers around ~90% for the last several years: https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share Google Cloud is growing faster than Azure & AWS for the last few years: https://www.statista.com/statistics/967365/worldwide-cloud-infrastructure-services-market-share-vendor/#:~:text=In%20the%20fourth%20quarter%20of,with%2010%20percent%20market%20share https://www.statista.com/statistics/967365/worldwide-cloud-i.... Cloud was at ~4% market share 5 years ago, now it's at ~10%... Android is the only major product doing somewhat poorly, and this is mostly due to Apple just completely crushing it with the iPhone. I get that Google is the company everyone loves to hate, but the sky isn't falling on this company yet.
- ipaddr 4y agoThese are weak reasons. They may have been at 90% over the last few years but things are quickly changing. The fasting growing cloud? 6% in five years after pouring in billions now they need to start charging what it costs. The more unprofitable of the cloud vendors. Chrome is still the most popular free browser. Not sure that matters as much as it once did.
- b112 4y agoChrome is still the most popular free browser. Not sure that matters as much as it once did. The data they collect via Chrome, plus their ad network, makes Chrome part of their money printing machine. So market share I think helps them here.
- baby 4y agoHow much influence/impact does a CEO at such a large company have tho? Is it rly his fault?
- justinclift 4y agoIn his case, it seems like "not enough". Other CEO's though definitely have more impact in their respective companies. Intel's recent re-invigoration once Pat Gelsinger took over seems like a reasonable example.
- baby 4y agoIs it that he doesn’t have enough ways to impact the company or is it that he’s incompetent though?
- dundarious 4y agoOften but not always true, which is why pay should be a few orders of magnitude lower.
- nxm 4y agoSee Satya Nadella at MS. Sundar has a lot of influence
- VHRanger 4y agoAs a CEO you can re-org things (eg. consolidate power) to have impact. Fixing this stuff is the job.
- mupuff1234 4y agoI assume he has quite a big say in what projects to fund or kill, or what companies to acquire. Not to mention hiring/promoting the right people.
- ulfw 4y agoIf he has little impact, why is he being paid $226,000,000 in a year?
- that_guy_iain 4y ago> He’s destroyed googles reputation with developers. He has? How did he do that? Literally, curious, first I've heard of it. > Led Google to third place in cloud computing. You don't need to be number 1 to make a profit. > AND been thrashed by Microsoft / ChatGPT, putting Googles core business at risk. I suspect you think google search is their core business. When it's ads. Also, just because Microsoft is ahead just now doesn't mean they will be in the future. OpenAI I believe is only so far ahead because they take what others gave and didn't give back. This resulted in others to stop sharing. Since OpenAI is going to stop getting that boost from others, it could be that others start catching up with advancements they discover but don't share.
- jen20 4y ago> You don't need to be number 1 to make a profit. GCP is not profitable, though. Or at least, was reported as not being during this calendar year.
- that_guy_iain 4y agoThat's because they're doing the standard thing of spending tons on growth. Like nearly every company does.
- jen20 4y agoDo you have any evidence that is the case or is it a gut feeling?
- that_guy_iain 4y agoPretty sure they‘ve openly stated it.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoI think you may underestimate how much ads is dependent on search. Google ads is an attractive place to buy ads (as opposed to the n + 1 other web ad exchanges) because of the ability to place ads on Google search through that platform. If search and YouTube weren't dominant in their market, there would be no reason to choose to use Google ads as opposed to a cheaper ad exchange.
- 29athrowaway 4y agoGPT-4 can pass the Amazon Interview in a few minutes. Perhaps having a good reputation with developers won't be as important in the upcoming years.
- lionkor 4y agoNot sure that means much, arent those interview questions meant to be gamed by memorization?
- themitigating 4y agoAre they making money? That's all that matters
- ur-whale 4y ago> Why is this guy CEO? "We need to be real thoughtful about this", followed by strictly no decision / action will be the hallmark of Sundar's tenure which I hope will end real soon.
- asveikau 4y agoGoogle was already on a trajectory to do all these things. It doesn't matter who the CEO is. The big tech co lifecycle includes decline. More than 10 years ago, I figured that Google was a few years behind Microsoft on that trajectory. Edit: and a lot of comments here are saying Satya turned MS around; i find that dubious.
- 1024core 4y agoInvestors are too stupid to see what's going on. Have you seen the ad load (the amount of realestate used by ads) in a search results page? It has gone through the roof. It used to be a typical Google search ad was: title, 2 lines of text at most, and a URL. Now you have 10 or more lines in the top ad. Of course as you use more space for ads, revenue will go up. Even an idiot can see that. It's no magic. But yet the leadership in Google acts as if they've done something magical by continuing to grow revenue. Well, d'uh!! Show more ads, get more money!!! This isn't some magical AI thing; it's pure greed at the cost of UX.
- jalapenos 4y agoHe's done great good: for himself, stuffing his wallet. He's played the game well, squirrelling his way to the top, and siphoning off his fill. For all the Alphabet stuff, and hiring the smartest engineers on the planet, I've yet to hear of a single Google breakthrough beyond their search. They're still just ad salesmen. Only other useful things they've done that most people would be aware of is refining Microsoft's email/office software into the SaaS age, and making a popular map app. That's great, but no breakthrough. Now OpenAI's going to kneecap them. Who searches for lists of potential sources of answers when ChatGPT just gives you them? They're fucked.
- abraxas 4y agoThe so coveted Transformer architecture came out of Google for one... I don't like what Google has become but I can't deny them the amazing work that both DeepMind and Google Brain have done over the years.
- log_n 4y agoYes they have done great work and discovered some really cool stuff, but they have not been able to commercialize it. That's what a CEO/management chain should ultimately be measured by, not whether they've built a great Xerox style research PARC.
- HyperSane 4y agoHe also let a woman be fired for complaining about caste discrimination.
- intelVISA 4y agoGoogle needs a warrior not a PM.
- martin82 4y agoWell said. In my eyes, Google is basically a zombie company like MySpace already. I fully expect the recent advancements in AI to bring to the surface more disruptive startups than Google can possibly gobble up, ultimately sealing its fate.